C'est La Guerre

Mark Serwotka (left), the eloquent head of Public and Commercial Services Union, is already a hardened campaigner against public sector cuts.

For all the Tories' talk of finally bringing discipline to public accounts, it ignores the several assaults Labour made on reducing welfare and the benefits to the civil service.

As soon as Ministers start using isolated examples of big payouts to mandarins you know the service as a whole is in for a battering. The reality is rather different. Most civil servants retire on a fairly pitiful small pension, the terms may be better than some areas of the private sector but the pay rates have been poor for so long, they could not really be described in any way as "generous".

Pensions and staff levels are being targetted for colossal reductions. Just at the point the economy is starting draw breath again the Coalition overnment is aiming a blow at its solar plexus. Serwotka rightfully described the forthcoming job losses as, "economically illiterate." The public sector, according to the more conservative Treasury figures is facing at least 600,000 job losses which rises to 1.3m when adding private sector. Add these numbers to the existing 2.57m unemployed and a total in excess of 4m is, to borrow a term from Osborne, "unavoidable."

It rather makes a nonsense of pulling 10,000s off disability benefits to give them a bigger incentive to find work. Each graduate position now receives 70 applications. Quite how students are expecting to pay off huge debts may be a mere detail to Ministers like Gove but a source of huge stress to countless families.

The Government is preparing for a huge rise in poverty, IDS's Work and Pensions Department are developing plans for issuing of food stamps. This is the undignified future for many, unemployment, no job prospects, reduced benefits, living off handouts.

What did we actually do to deserve this? Did millions of civil servants, low paid and benefit claimants spend extravagantly in the last few years? Or did the vast national debt pile up on bailing out TSB/Lloyds, Bradford and Bingley, RBS and Northern Rock?

The banks' share of pain is a derisory £2bn transaction tax which even the IMF has suggested should be at least four times higher. Soon they'll be back earning their super profits while the bottom sixth of society sinks to a new level of 'underclass'.

This is what you voted for.